History, doctrine, culture, books

Some Sanity on the LDS Prop 8 Effort

From a surprising source, Andrew Sullivan at the Atlantic Online. After noting that roughly 40% of the Yes on 8 financing has come from LDS contributors, he notes, "It's all legal, and totally within their democratic rights." Thank you, Mr. Sullivan. He doesn't decry LDS participation in the campaign; he doesn't call for any efforts to harrass Mormons like the nutjobs over at Daily Kos; he doesn't try to identify and target individual LDS contributors like the people running and supporting the deceptively named Mormons for Proposition 8 site. He ends the short article with a simple suggestion that those who disagree with the LDS position donate to the No on 8 campaign. Bravo for a little online civility in this noisy election season.

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Dave,

People who can speak with civility deserve some credit, I suppose. Although good manners -- and common sense -- dictate that it ought to be the minimum standard for common discourse. If you have to resort to incivility, you have probably already lost that argument.

I think ignorant is a better term. The folks at Daily Kos are not nuts. They are quite cogent. I wrote a diary post trying to state my conflicted feelings about Prop 8, for example, and I got like 445 comments before I deleted the post. I was disappointed with most of the responses, many of whom called me a bigot for my views. It's not that they are nutjobs. It's that based on their accepted views the position of the church is intolerable.

Chino, I have to admit that the suggestion that people go and harass Mormon donors in the campaign was really quite unhinged. I am opposed to Prop 8 and was actually fairly sympathetic to some of the discussion at Daily Kos on the issue. But you guys really jumped shark with that little piece of Chairman Mao-esque idiocy.

The SL Trib reports today that the Church has "immediately released" all Utah County members of the church "called" to work against Prop 8. Is the Church worried about tax exempt status? Worried that a bunch of calls from people from outside CA hurt the cause? Whatever the reason, it also qualifies as "Some Sanity on the LDS Prop 8 Effort."

There are many churches involved in the coalition to restore the traditional definition of marriage -- not just Mormons.

The institution of marriage is not merely a political or social issue; rather, it has serious concequences for religious freedom and every individual's freedom of expression as it pertains to marriage and homosexual behaviors.

I think it behooves every church in this state to weigh in on this particular matter; if churches sit back and stand for nothing, they'll allow their memebers to be stripped of the freedom to believe and worship as they so choose, and in so doing fail to serve the people in their congregations.

Mormon Books 2013-14

Parley P. Pratt: The Apostle Paul of MormonismGivens and Grow's warts-and-all biography of this energetic missionary, author, and apostle whose LDS career spanned Joseph Smith's life, the emigration to Utah, and Brigham Young's early leadership of the Church in Utah. My Review